Ian Eagle couldn’t be happier with J.J. Watt partnership

CBS didn’t plan on breaking up Ian Eagle and Charles Davis.

Eagle and Davis had been calling games together since 2020, quietly building one of the better broadcast partnerships in the NFL. They ranked fifth in Awful Announcing’s 2024 NFL announcer rankings, doing solid work that never generated as much fanfare as they probably deserved, but they got the job done week after week.

The partnership ended when Gary Danielson announced his retirement. Davis saw his opportunity to become CBS’s lead college football analyst and took it, leaving Eagle to find a new booth partner for 2025. The network promoted J.J. Watt from his studio role to fill the void.

Three weeks later, Eagle sounds like someone who couldn’t be happier with how things worked out.

“It’s really been a blast. He’s really a great teammate. He wants to be excellent at this. He’s putting all of the time and effort necessary to be elite at this job,” Eagle said during a recent appearance on You Better You Bet on Audacy’s BetMGM Network. “And he’s a Hall of Fame player, a guy who did it at the highest level. You can sense the respect when other players come into the room when we have our production meetings.

“And, he’s just really good company. He’s just a good dude, which is the added bonus in broadcasting. You’re going to spend 20 weeks in some form with this person, so it’s much better and a more enjoyable job when you actually like the person next to you, too. So, that’s been really nice.”

Eagle’s comment about sensing the respect in production meetings gets to something important about J.J. Watt’s advantage as an analyst. When current players walk into those rooms and see him, they’re not just dealing with another former player asking questions. They’re talking to someone who was dominant at the highest level, and that changes how they respond.

Having a brother currently playing in the league has complicated that dynamic, though. Before his first broadcast, J.J. Watt had to sit across from his brother T.J. in a production meeting and pretend they didn’t text each other constantly. “I had to be in that meeting with him and pretend that we don’t talk every day of the week, and ask him questions like we don’t know each other,” Watt explained afterward.

That’s created trust issues with some teams. Watt has acknowledged that organizations have been more guarded with information because they’re worried anything shared with one Watt brother might find its way to the other. It’s the same problem Tom Brady has dealt with all season, which is maintaining objectivity when you have obvious conflicts of interest.

What’s impressed Eagle most, though, isn’t just J.J. Watt’s credibility with players. He specifically mentioned Watt’s preparation and work ethic, which matters because broadcasting has claimed plenty of Hall of Fame players who thought their playing credentials would carry them in the booth. They learned the hard way that explaining football on television requires different skills than playing it.

CBS made a calculated decision when Davis left for college football. The network had J.J. Watt ready to step up from the studio, and they paired him with one of their most experienced play-by-play voices. The bet was that Eagle’s ability to elevate any partner would combine with Watt’s football credibility to create something worthwhile.

Three weeks in, that calculation is already paying off.